To divine a person's politics, hand them a chocolate cream pie and lock them in a room with Alec Baldwin. If Baldwin calls out for a coffee—and not a towel—you've found a liberal. But even Henry Hyde, the Republican who Baldwin once suggested deserved a stoning for his role in the Clinton impeachment, would admit that few actors can unite menace and charm on-screen like Baldwin. The 48-year-old will soon be seen losing his cool in Scorsese's The Departed, De Niro's The Good Shepherd, and the film adaptation of Running With Scissors; and will play a Lorne Michaels type in Tina Fey's sitcom set on an SNL-like show. Any remaining offscreen spleen is being channeled into an upcoming book addressing the issues he faced during his rancorous custody battle with ex-wife Kim Basinger. Recently, the longtime environmental activist has lent his famous blue eyes and gravelly voice to support a proposed offshore wind park in his native Long Island that would create a renewable alternative to fossil fuels. That's a cause that even George W. Bush, recently reborn as an oil 12-stepper, might be willing to get behind.

ELLE: When did you feel like you were most attractive to women?

ALEC BALDWIN: One generation might like you, then 15 years later the next is responding to somebody else. I look at how some people carry on about so and so actor, and I think, You're kidding. I was the recipient, to some degree, of that adoration myself.

ELLE: Did you feel like you deserved it?

AB: No more or less than any other guy. I never walked out the door and said, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest Baldwin brother of them all?"

AB: My friend [playwright] Ronnie Dobson said, "You don't know anybody until you meet their monster. You've got to see someone at their worst and ask yourself if you can handle it."

ELLE: As a divorced guy, do you have any stock advice for men about to get married?

AB: Don't do it unless you look at that person and say, "I can't get out of bed in the morning knowing that she's out there." If you do get married, get a prenup. It's not about money at all. It's about having a document that states how you'll dissolve your marriage while you still have a shred of respect for each other.

ELLE: In the case of your own marriage, do you ever think back and recognize red flags?

AB: Do I regret getting married? It's hard for me to say anything because ultimately we're talking about the mother of my child.

ELLE: Understandable. If your romantic life were turned into a film, what would the movie be called?

AB: Psycho.

ELLE: What's the girliest article of clothing you own?

AB: A few years ago there was a shirt at Fred Segal, this purple crepe thing with a frilly collar—literally a shirt only Mick Jagger could wear, but suddenly I'm hallucinating that I'm a superthin, beautiful rock star. I buy it for like $500, and my girlfriend says, "What's wrong with you? You're going to come down from your retail acid trip and say, 'What have I done?'" She was right.

ELLE: If you could prep any woman you date with a handbook, what would be the most important point you could make?

AB: Have your own thing that you're into. I don't need to be married to Georgia O'Keeffe or Lillian Hellman, but I like being with a woman I can look up to.

ELLE: Ever been in the presence of any man whose pull on women has made you feel like you just can't compete?

AB: Tony Hopkins, when I did The Edge in 1997. Even my own sister made an ass of herself when she met him, stuttering and stumbling over her speech. Or Clinton. In the end, Clinton was a lot of things, but he was a president who was getting laid.

ELLE: And such discerning taste in ladies.

AB: Well, he was a busy guy. When you're really, really busy and you're driving down the road, you have a bag of Doritos every now and then. So that was the bag of Doritos on the shelf at that particular rest stop on the Garden State Parkway.

AB: Most women in leading roles are very boyish looking. The one girl working right now who I think is a real beauty in a classic sense—the only real 12-cylinder engine—is Catherine Zeta-Jones.

ELLE: What's the one thing that you could find in a woman's apartment that would suggest to you that you'd be absolutely incompatible?

AB:Mein Kampf. And second only to Mein Kampf is US Weekly.

ELLE: Do you find yourself unaccountably attracted to Paris Hilton?

AB: No! When I did The Cat in the Hat I had a scene with her. She was lovely, very sweet. But she decides to make a video with a guy whose lack of ethics wafts off him like cologne, who you can see from 50 feet away is trash? She puts the d in dumb.

ELLE: If we unleashed you and your brothers in a bar, who would end up doing the best with women?

AB: Stephen. He just beams sweetness and accessibility. When he walks into a room they're practically just taking their clothes off.

AB: I gotta go with Feinstein. With Coulter we'd have sex and I'd have to jump out the window. I wouldn't even get dressed.

ELLE: How long would you abstain from sex if it meant that a Democrat would get elected president in 2008?

AB: A month.

ELLE: That's all? And I thought you were committed to the party.

AB: That's a lot! It's not your business whether it's a lot or not. It's a month! That's a commitment to me. How dare you say otherwise?

ELLE: Easy. Who's the sexiest Republican you've ever seen?

AB: Debbie Loeffler. My neighbor in East Hampton John Loeffler is married to a woman who's this wonderful, charming, sexy, but ultimately tiresome and overbearingly cookie-cutter Republican. Depending on what point we are in conversation, I either want to go on a date with her or throw her down a flight of stairs.